The holidays have now come and gone in a fair number of places, though they’re technically still going until the 6th in Iceland (though my classes have already started, thanks to a professor who thinks it’s ok to start classes before the university semester eve begins)! That means that it’s a good time to reflect on all the good fun and good beer the holiday season brought. Chiefly, I am quite proud of the good run of Christmas Beer (Jólabjór) I had, pictured here in chronological order from left (oldest) to right (newest).

I ended with the Viking Yule Bock on New Year’s Day, which seemed like a fitting time to complete my collection. In truth, I wasn’t really planning on making a new year’s post as I felt like the “closeout” post from last time, which was quite extensive, offered up a good bit of coverage. I was just planning on mentioning the beer in a future post and leaving that at that. However, sometimes something happens that is just profoundly blog-worthy, and sometimes such a thing (literally) comes in with a bang.

Yes, SB and I got to experience New Year’s Eve in Iceland, and boy oh boy, was it a spectacle. Unlike many cities, Reykjavík has no formal fireworks display on New Years. What!? You might ask. Well, you needn’t worry. Despite having no “official” fireworks display, the fireworks that went off here were absolutely mind-boggling, and far, FAR surpassed anything I’ve ever seen. How so? Well, you could almost call it “crowd sourcing” a giant, mutli-hour long fireworks display. SB and I knew that fireworks were big here (literally and figuratively), but we had just no idea how big. Per the city of Reykjavík’s website, over 500 tons. Yes 500+ tons, of fireworks are launched by the local denizens. I find that number entirely believable.

Now, if you read my previous post, you’ll noticed that I mentioned “10-15 spontaneous displays” starting at 2pm and going quite late in the days leading up to the New Year. The funny thing, is that I actually edited that upward from 5-10. Turns out the fun was only just beginning. The evening of New Year’s Eve started.. well, more around like 12:30pm and then lasted until sometime after we went to bed at 2am the next morning. The fireworks started well within our narrow band of daylight (impatient, lol) and then really began to pick up once it got dark in the afternoon. Before too long it sounded and looked like we were in a war zone.

As a photo won’t do it much justice, I’m going to try to post a video here. I rarely post videos via the blog interface, so we’ll see how this works. You’ll definitely need volume to fully appreciate the war zone like vibe to it.

Assuming that works properly for you, you’ll have hopefully heard what I was referring to with the war zone bit. That went on for hours, and hours. Until eventually the entire horizon (and right next to us) was just a smattering of slowly escalating fireworks and flares, lots of flares too.

The interesting bit is that yes, the fireworks build and build, but then right around 10:30pm they almost entirely stop. Indeed, if you pay attention you’ll notice that pretty much everything stops. Suddenly there’s no traffic, no party noise, and only a few pockets of fireworks continue paired with a lone flare or two lazily floating towards the earth. What is so particular about 10:30pm you might ask? Áramótaskaupið.

Yeah, try saying that one five times fast. Áramótaskaupið, which translates to “New Year’s Eve’s Ridicule” is a television show that airs from 10:30pm to roughly 11:30pm on New Year’s Eve in Iceland, and has without fail since 1966. Áramótaskaupið, or often, just “skaupið,” is a comedy/variety show that focuses on the closing year from an extremely satirical standpoint. It’s known for being quite ruthless in its portrayal of events, individuals, trends, etc. It’s also insanely popular with Icelanders. Not only are the ratings some of the highest in the world, skaupið also retains a massive percentage of the country’s population as viewers. Some years have seen the viewing numbers as high as 95.5% of the country’s population. I don’t mean viewing population, I mean, literally, 95.5% of the entire country watched the show. While not confirmed by any record-keeping source that I can fine, this viewership has been said to be a record in television history.

So, things get quiet for a little while because almost everyone has just went inside to watch Áramótaskaupið. We watched it too!

Granted, it’s almost entirely in Icelandic (aside from a few bits making fun of tourists), so we were a bit limited in the uptake, but a few skits required no comprehension of Icelandic to appreciate.

Of course, the real craziness comes after Áramótaskaupið ends, usually sometime in the 11:20 – 11:30pm range. As everyone goes back to their fireworks arsenal, things begin to build exponentially, especially around 11:35pm as all battle stations are manned again by then. The result is an ever-building crescendo that builds so much steam it not only blows through the stroke of midnight, but keeps going well past the bell’s toll to the point that you can’t help but wonder if Iceland is fending off the largest aerial raid in human history. Here’s a video taken at some point around the midnight hour.

As one Icelander I spoke to put it, “On New Year’s Eve we go to war with the sky.” I thought that was pretty apt. It was absolutely crazy. Plus, as mentioned, it just kept going and while it did calm down after a bit, they were still sporadically launching fireworks until about 11pm on January 4th. So yes, fireworks are a big bid deal – and that isn’t even counting their upcoming return on Þrettándinn. [Update: Þrettándinn ended up being pretty crazy too, with fireworks until 2:30am or so, and they were quite loud as the nearest bonfire was only about 2 blocks from our house.]

But, as we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves into, we had some other, smaller-scale festivities planned for the Dinosaur Bear household. You have to keep yourself busy in your concrete bunker during the fireworks apocalypse in order to avoid cabin fever, after all!

First, I made us some slow-cooked lamb stew, with beer, potatoes, red cabbage, onions, mushrooms, and a bunch of spices. We had it with toasted bread and “Sød Fransk Sennep” or Sweet French Mustard. It was quite yummy – plus we had leftovers for more New Year’s cabbage.

We paired it with some also-yummy ice cream, and then later moved onto the drinks, of course! In addition to the aforementioned Christmas Beers, we also had a couple of specialty items. The first, is the famous Brennivín. Brennivín, which I’ve mentioned before, is an Icelandic unsweetened schnapps made from fermented grain or potato mash and flavored with caraway and is generally in the 37.5-40% ABV range. It’s unofficially Iceland’s Iceland’s signature distilled beverage and is the traditional drink for the mid-winter feast of Þorrablót. It’s also seen paired with kæstur hákarl, which I discussed in my Westfjords Post.

It was SB and I’s first time having it (woo we’ve now had both it and kæstur hákarl), and despite not being hard alcohol people we both agreed it was pretty good (for hard alcohol). We tried it a few times straight to get it’s full flavor, and then experimented with mixing it into a few different things (orange juice: no, Sprite: yes). We both got a bit of a fruity/minty vibe from it and we much preferred it to vodka, with which it is sometimes compared but is actually quite different.

We also tried Barley Wine for the first time.

We’d been meaning to try it for awhile, and SB actually picked some up a few weeks ago – we just decided to save it for the holidays. Our mutual reactions were Taco: 2.5/5.0 and SB 0.5/5.0 – so as you can see, lukewarm to outright disgust, lol. I actually ended up finishing SB’s for her, as I didn’t think it was nearly as bad as she did. It’s an interesting thing to describe, sort of beer, sort of really heavy wine, and our variety clocked in at 10% ABV. Would I drink it again? Yes. Would I drink it often? Definitely no.

The last of our alcoholic adventures was this little fellow, Birkir Snaps.

This drink was an impulse purchase, because it sounded interesting. Birkir Snaps is an Icelandic distilled grain spirit which uses Icelandic birch, picked during the spring, as its primary flavoring element. So yes, that is a twig you see in the bottle.

It’s just a special Icelandic twig. Obviously this one had some very woody flavors, with a bit of freshness to it that I’m not well-versed enough in non-beer to describe. I liked it a bit less than the Brennivín, but it wasn’t so bad I couldn’t drink it. We still have a bit left, and will probably try mixing it with something, though the birch-flavor isn’t a typical mixing platform.

Now, if our air raid fireworks, food, and copious amount of alcohol don’t sound like a good enough time for you, we also went full on rave.

Yes, courtesy of a well-placed endcap at Bónus we picked up three glow-bracelets and a pair of glow-sunglasses for New Year’s. Naturally these quickly became the boys’, and it is the boys who retained them for almost the entire evening, complete with epic red Yule-lad candle lighting for their rave.

In fact, by the time we finally rolled into bed around 2:00am, Tristen wasn’t quite ready to stop the rave, so we booted up some classic Sandstorm and let him get in a few more sweet moves.

The funny thing is, despite the package saying that the bracelets/glasses would glow for 6 hours, the red and green bracelets lasted more like 12 hours, and the glasses lasted for about a solid 24 hours (though very faint by the end). Definitely good value for the small amount of money we paid for them. A ravers gotta rave, ya’ know.

Anyways, that’s a good recap of our crazy, fireworks-laden New Year’s Eve exponanza. It was a lot of fun, and most certainly contained a bunch of unexpected surprises!

I hope you had an enjoyable New Year’s celebration as well! Here’s to 2018!

SB and I generally don’t go too crazy for St. Patrick’s Day. Over the years we’ve mostly just made some green beer (and sometimes green food, such as green oatmeal) and stayed in. That actually doesn’t bother me too much as I’ve never been much a of party person anyways.

This year we technically only bought a single can for St. Patrick’s Day, but that was because we still had several beers from the prior weekend because I hadn’t been feeling well and (*gasp*) wasn’t drinking any beer. So, while this beer blurb is a St. Patrick’s Day Edition, it actually covers beer that I got before, on, and after St. Patrick’s Day.

For starters, let’s visit a 12 pack I bought back at the start of Spring Break.

I’ve had pretty much this exact same sampler before (see link above), but this time there are only 4 beers rather than 5, which is kind of a bummer since I prefer sampler packs with more variety. The missing beer is Brooklyn’s Pennant Ale ’55, which was amazing, so I’m sad to see it excluded. Outside of that, the other 4 beers are the same, though I think the recipes might have been tweaked in the past 1.5 years.

This is a classic English style brown ale with American accents and a firm hop character with a roasty palate. Of all the beers, this is the one where I feel like they changed the recipe the most, it now feels much stronger than it used to be, in fact I feel like this is more of a stout than a brown anymore, it’s still a good “one and done” kind of beer though.

Brooklyn claims that this is the “world’s most balanced IPA,” and while I do love Brooklyn Brewery, that is a genuinely “puff” statement. It’s still a good beer though, and since it uses barley and hops only sourced from Britain, it is a genuine IPA, or at least a genuinely historically-accurate IPA. Definitely a good one.

This a refreshing full-malt pilsner which is brewed with German 2-row barley malt and it has a crisp hop finish. I was really impressed by this pilsner, it has a lot of flavor and a surprisingly complex profile. This one seems to have changed a bit as well (though not as much as the brown ale), and even if the recipe didn’t change, the colors have changed some as it used to have some blue in the label.

This was Brooklyn Brewery’s first ever beer, and while it is sort of “run of the mill,” this dry-hopped amber lager does everything you’d want a lager to do. While it’s not quite as memorable as their pilsner, the lager may well be the most sessionable beer of the box.

5. Green East India Pale Ale!

This was one of our two beers we had on St. Patrick’s Day itself. SB mainly worked on this one while we were playing Little Big Planet. Other than being green, there wasn’t much difference, though the green food coloring did ever so slightly change the flavor for the worse, but not enough to ruin the beer by any means.

What would St. Patrick’s Day be without a Guinness? Probably one of the world’s more famous beers, if you really want a beer with varied opinions, then you should try a Guinness. Some people live and breathe this beer, while others wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. Some think it tastes like bad coffee, others think it tastes like nectar from the Gods. Regardless of your position, you can’t be a “beer drinker” without at least trying Guinness. I for one like Guinness, especially their Draught, but it’s not a beer I’d drink constantly. I prefer to have it while out (sometimes mixed with orange juice – yes seriously) and at home in single bottles or cans. Such was the case this St. Patrick’s Day, where I enjoyed it’s creamy smoothness and also unlocked like 4 badges on Untappd for checking into a Guinness on Saint Patty’s Day. Sadly you can’t easily dye it green, at least not without using like a gallon of food dye, thus ruining the beer.

SB and I picked this up last weekend. This beer is kind of interesting because we first had it on a plane, for free. Since that flight we’d been meaning to try it again, preferably in a bottle, so when I saw it for 10.49$ for a six pack (which sadly is actually a really good price out here) I had to give it a try.

This was probably my worst pour in recent memory, which is weird because I didn’t change anything, maybe the glass was too cold.

I still agree with my prior review, it’s a good beer and it’s definitely a winter shandy. Which ironically means that you could probably enjoy it in the summer as well, since it is a shandy after all. There are a lot of flavors in this brew, and if I had any critique it would probably be that the ginger tends to be a bit strong, and the cranberry is a bit weak. That said, cranberry and ginger are a great combo rarely seen in (widely available) beers, so it’s hard to knock a big brewery for trying something cool. I imagine this recipe will improve over time and even as a it currently exists, I’d solidly recommend it.

And as a final note, I now have 21 badges on Untappd! Woo gamification of alcoholism! 😀

Just a short Beer Blurb for today. SB is actually back home visiting family, so it’s just me and the boys here at the homestead this weekend. Naturally this means that ample quantities of beer shall be flowing. Of course ample quantities of beer are always flowing in this household, but being alone for five days is just an added excuse to get more beer.

Deciding what beer to have for our “Bachelor Pad” weekend wasn’t much of a challenge, we’d been eyeing Tröegs for awhile now, and after SB brought home a six pack of the Sunshine Pils, we knew it was time to spring for the sampler pack.

The Tröegs Anthology Sampler Case

So a bit about the Tröegs brewery. It’s actually named after its founders, the Trogner brothers (John and Chris) and is currently located in Hershey, Pennsylvania (meaning that Hershey has both beer and chocolate and is therefore pretty much a mythical land of wonder and joy), though it actually started in Harrisburg, PA. So far I’ve really enjoyed what Tröegs has to offer. Sadly, they are a limited distribution brewery for freshness purposes so they don’t ship too far and wide, but they ship to me, so that is all that matters. 🙂

All beers are from the Tröegs Brewing Company.

Anyways, if you remember from my Restaurant Week 2015 post I actually one of the sampler beers already, the Sunshine Pils.

After having it again, I’d have to say that my opinion is pretty much unchanged. Not that that is a bad thing, as I liked it the first time. It’s definitely a clean beer, and the noble hops came out even more the second time around now that I know to look for them. The lacing was still crisp, but not quite as pronounced, that might either be a batch thing or just me focusing more on the hops, which is easier to do with the 4.5% ABV. I still recommend this one.

Ok, so taste aside, this is probably the best name for a wheat beer I’ve seen in awhile (if not ever). It was pretty much impossible not to sing Dream Weaver, while drinking it, or maybe that was just because this was my second beer, either way, it was a happy moment. As for the beer itself, it was a pretty good 4.8% ABV Hefeweizen, nothing super exceptional, but definitely on the better side. It is a bit hazy, typical of a wheat, but it’s more thin than it’s color would suggest, and the carbonation is higher than you might imagine. The typical hefeweizen notes of banana, clove, and lemon (or citrus in general) are all present, but none are overpowering. So definitely a good beer, but I’ll remember it more for its name than for being a “stand-out” wheat beer.

This was an interesting pale ale. I felt like it was some sort of hybrid cross between a pale, an amber, and a red. It has a clear light amber pour that is darker than a normal pale ale, at least slightly. Lacing and body are normal for a pale, but the flavor is fairly complex with elements of pine and spice alongside the typical pale bitterness. Still, the more amber-like sweetness lingers alongside the hop elements of the pale. Honestly I don’t think is a strong example of a purist pale ale, but that said, it is a good hybrid beer and I’d recommend it if you aren’t a stickler for true-to-form recipes.

So admittedly I don’t drink amber ales as much as I did about six or seven years ago. It’s rather weird, I was sort of indoctrinated in red and amber ales (alongside wheat ales), but I don’t drink them that often anymore. This isn’t because I don’t like them, but rather because there is a huge IPA fad right now. So, in light of that, Hopback plays to the strengths of both a traditional amber as well as the new “hop” craze that is sweeping microbreweries. There is a finely tuned balanced of hop and malts to this beer, in a way you’d not normally encounter with an amber ale. While this isn’t as much a hybrid at their pale ale is, it’s still not an entirely traditional amber, but again, they pull it off well. The malt-like sweetness didn’t sit as well with the other balanced tones, but still, it definitely would get my recommendation to anyone who likes amber ales.

So overall, I really think that the Sunshine Pils is probably my favorite beer of the bunch. Tröegs seems to like tweaking classic recipes, be it something as mild as extra carbonation (Dream Weaver) to a complete twist on the norm (Pale Ale). However, rather than failing at it, they seem to do quite a good job. I’ll need to drink more Tröegs to get a full opinion, but right now I find a hard reason not to recommend them, even if they are overly consistent in their flavor profiles.

And that wraps up this Beer Blurb. I’m now going to go back to procrastinating on all my assignments that are rolling in despite the start of the semester still being ten days away.

Until next time,
-Taco

P.S. – There is a wooden sculpture of what appears to be an eagle taking shape at the school near us, I noticed it during my run.

So how were things during week 1? Well, they weren’t too bad. 1L Roomie is pretty cool. I mean sure, he is another human being that I have to live and interact with, but he can’t help that. His girlfriend, who is originally from Mexico, is around the apartment a fair bit, but she is nice and doesn’t really bother me either. By and large he is nice, helpful, and leaves me the f* alone when my door is shut – all of which are nice qualities. He picked me up from the airport which was awesome (and saved me a chunk of change since I really didn’t want to deal with my suitcase on two different public buses I would have had to use a shuttle or car service). He’s also fed more good noms on more than one occasion including homemade guacamole, sweet potato ginger stew, and grass fed beef liver. He is on some sort of interesting “high-fat” diet and makes lots of very noms foods, and I don’t complain at all when he shares with me. He also shares pretty much al l the stuff in the kitchen, yet doesn’t seem to take the food I buy. Pretty much a perfect setup there. Most importantly he has a Keurig coffee maker, and gave me like 30 little coffee pods to get started. He also gave me 8 bottles of beer, all of which are gone.

He is also a snowboarder and mountain-biker (which is like.. everyone in Colorado) and a native Coloradoan, so he has lots of suggestions about “outdoorsy” things to do.

I also have my own bathroom, which is worth its weight in gold. Probably not, a bathroom is heavy. But still, it is worth a lot to me.

The building itself is decent. It has lots of amenities (not including internet) such as a balcony for the apartment (sadly not facing West – toward the best mountain views – but I’m not complaining as it’s still a balcony, and you can still see mountains). There is also a semi-heated pool, I say semi-heated because some days it’s warm, other days it feels not warm. A hot tub, which is warm, even if I can’t figure out the buttons (I think some of them are broken). A little gym, which is actually quite nice when I sometimes have it all to myself at 6:30am. A common room with some comfy chairs, some not comfy chairs with tables, a pool table, and a kitchen. There is also an outdoor patio area. The building is also secure with controlled entryways, and there is a building manager on duty from 8-6 M-F, and 8-12 on the weekends.

It’s an older building, and all of the above things are just in average shape. I mean none of it is bad, but it’s not resort level or anything. It is clean though, even if the occasional hot-tub jet and exercise bike seat-raiser don’t work.

So yeah, where I live is pretty good aside from the Ethopia-tier internet.

Where I work has much better internet, but I obviously can’t use that to blog and play games. Well, maybe I could, and get fired. Having a Job > Blogging.

I’m still in the “acclimating” stage of my job, so I’ll comment on it more as I get deeper into the summer (as I write this I’m only 1/10th of the way into my internship). However, most everyone seems pretty nice and chill, even if there is a current of stress underneath. There is of course that one guy who is an asshole, but I’ve never heard of job that didn’t have that one guy. Fortunately for me, I don’t directly work with him, so our interactions are passing.

So I guess I should explain the office setup.

I work within the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) of the Department of Justice (DOJ). The division is further divided up into several different sections. I am a special one in that I work for two sections, Environmental Enforcement Section (EES) and Environmental Defense Section (EDS). Most interns only work for one section. EES and EDS in the Denver field office have two interns – me and one other person. The Natural Resources Section (NRS) also has one intern, as does the Indian Resources Section (IRS – lol I know it confused me too). So there are 4 interns in total at the office, whereas D.C. has like… billions. The four of us interns share an office, which literally used to be a storage closet, I am completely serious. But it’s really not bad, it’s like 1/3 the size of my apartment back in Cambridge and I have my own desk.

I have a “supervisor” in each section – EES/EDS. However, it’s primarily my EES supervisor who is my “boss-boss.” That said, as a HIGH-RANKING-SUCH-PRESTIGE intern, I basically get lent out to whoever needs me in either EES or EDS. So while I have a formal supervisor in both sections (with EES being my primary) I actually work for whatever attorney needs me and gets to me first. You might not imagine it, but we interns are actually pretty sought-after.

On the first day my supervisor took me and the other intern out to lunch, then took us to get cupcakes. Then on the first Friday we watched a documentary (on uranium mines), had pizza, and then later went to a Happy Hour – which they paid for my two drinks.

So that is all I’ll say about work for now. It will obviously be the focus of future check-ins.

As for exploring, Tristen and I have been busy boys. In addition to finding grocery stores, figuring out buses, etc. We’ve been going on bicycle rides (1L Roomie has an extra membership to Denver’s bicycle sharing system) and checking out the city and some parks. Just this weekend we checked out the Capital Building and the Civic Center Parj. We also went and checked out the big City Park (basically Denver’s equivalent of Central Park). We also spent pretty much an entire day walking around Downtown (where I work) and Lower Downtown (LoDo) including stops at the famous Giant Blue Bear Statute and Union Station (where we got some tasty Pigtrain Coffee and watched people playing in the fountain). But most importantly, as Tristen commands I write, we went to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. We were lucky enough to catch one of their free days, which saved me the 15$ cost of entry. The real reason we went, is because they have a TON of dinosaurs (and Dr. Scott from Dinosaur Train works there!). Manries. So yeah, Tristen loved every second of that (even with the free day crowds), and the other exhibits were pretty cool too especially the wildlife exhibit focusing on bears. Ray! They even had a temporary exhibit about Mythical Creatures (dragons, krakens, etc.) that hypothesized about the origins of such creatures in our cultural mythos. But really it was about the dinosaurs. Res.

I’ve already drawn up a list of things I want to do (based on recommendations and/or guide books), and even started crossing some of them off already! Look for more adventures and general information in the upcoming check-ins.

I’ve now had every member of the main Dogfish Head IPA (India Pale Ale) family.

I’ve been alluding to this post for some time now, and I’m happy to report that I can finally write it. Yes, as of last Tuesday (4/14/15) I have had all of these amazing beers.

Boy, what an adventure it has been. Its involved everything from the single most expensive beer I’ve ever had, to last-minute solo voyages down into Boston just to find a beer.

I’ve mentioned some of this elsewhere, but since this is a celebratory post, let me give these amazing brews a bit more of a back story. All of these are from esteemed the esteemed Dogfish Head brewery. Dogfish was founded in 1995 by a one Sam Calagione (a friend of Jim Koch) in Milton, Delware. Sam is well respected in the brewing industry, and Dogfish is known for is eclectic and quirky approaches to beer that almost always end up being delicious. Their flagship line is their IPA family. Most people list these as the 60 Minute, 90 Minute, and 120 Minute IPAs. However, as I learned, the full family includes 60, 61 (Sixty-One), 75, 90, and 120 varieties. (Its worth noting that the 90 Minute IPA has been referred to as “possibly the best IPA in America.”) Now that I’ve had them all, I can comment on each of them, and the “family” on the whole.

I’m going to be a little bit more hostile than normal here, and start off by saying that if you think you don’t like IPAs then you’ve probably had bad IPAs. There are IPAs, then there are IPAs. These are most definitely IPAs. I try not to be too massive of a beerfag, but this is one place where I firmly put my foot down and say that you have to try these beers, all of them, before you can say you definitively dislike IPAs. If you try all these IPAs and hate them all, then I would never again question your IPA taste. I am a reformed IPA lover. Many years ago my first IPA was the Dragonfly IPA from Upland Brewing Company. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. Many years later I had it again and it wasn’t half bad. That said, the Dogfish Head IPAs make it look like Pißwasser.

These are, hands down, the best IPAs I have ever had.

However, there can only be one, and so even within this powerhouse family of IPAs I took myself to town trying to figure out which one I liked best. Based on all my posts leading up to this point, the result might surprise you.

As a recap, I covered the 60 Minute IPA here and the 90 Minute IPA here. The 61, 75, and 120 are all fresh. But I’ll be revisiting the 60 and 90 in light of my completion of the family.

Taco’s Dogfish Head IPA Opinions:

60 Minute IPA – Lots of fresh hop oil flavor, very juicy with citric and bitter herbal tones. Solid maltiness holds up to the hops well with a dough toasted grain mix. Touch of nutty yeast with a slight warmth from estery alcohol. Finish semi-dry with a long lingering bitter finish from the hops. An ideal IPA, very drinkable and very flavorful. By far the most drinkable of the Dogfish Head IPA offerings. This might be why its the only one of the bunch to be offered in a six-pack. You can definitely tell that the 60 forms the “base” upon which the Dogfish Head IPA pyramid is built.

Sixty-One (61) IPA – This one is named slightly different as a way of differentiating it from its brethren. Sixty-One is actually the 60 Minute, just brewed with Syrah Grape Must, which increases is alcohol content slightly and gives it a fruity grape flavor. It tastes like its smells, a fruity, sweet, and earthy hop forward taste with big notes of Syrah grapes. Citrus hops with juicy notes. Grassy and floral hop notes. Big taste of grapes intermingled with the hops. Bready malt with sweet notes of caramel, grains, biscuit, and yeast. Very juicy with a laid back bitterness. A very interesting and good taste.

75 Minute IPA – This is a combination IPA. It takes the 60 Minute IPA and the 90 Minute IPA and mixes them together during the brew processes, then adds maple syrup to the mix. Like the aroma hints at, it has a a zesty, fruity, and fairly earthy IPA taste with a nice kick of sweet syrup. Mix of hops upfront with earthy notes of grass and spicy pine. Juicy citrus hop presence with notes of orange rind, lemon zest, pineapple, grapefruit, mango, and some apricot. Sweet and toasty malt presence with notes of caramel, toffee, yeast, biscuit, and toast. Sweet notes of the added maple syrup come through as well. A big and nicely balanced taste. Aside from draft its only offered in a 1 Pint, 9.4 fl oz. bottle (firkin).

Almost as interesting is the beer itself is its label. Originally this beer was called “Johnny Cask – 75 Minute IPA” and it featured a drawing of Johnny Cash tapping the keg. Well, despite Dogfish Head’s offer to pay, Cash’s estate didn’t like that too much. So, Dogfish Head changed the name to 75 Minute IPA, but as a good-natured middle-finger to Cash’s estate and also just to be funny, they kept the image exactly the same except they drew a Groucho Marx getup on Cash’s face.

And here is a close-up of the 75 Minute IPA as it currently exists:

In many ways this makes me love them even more.

90 Minute IPA – This beer is very “juicy”, with a big a hop punch. There is lots of bitterness and a ton of hop oil flavor from front to back. Very smooth with a thick malty body. Nice cake like maltiness in the middle with a ripe fruit and alcoholic kick in the end, finishes a little sweet with lingering bitter hop tones. Smooth upfront, big and chewy in the mouthfeel with a creamy palate. Hops are in your face with prickly, bitter, herbal, pine, citrus rind, salt, slick viscid hop oils, raw leafy hops, earth, resin-like all in a complex and intense medley of characters. Malts are a bit masked by this and take a backseat for most of the drive with some bready flavors and a lot of backseat driving as far as the mouthfeel goes. Alcohol is very present, with a warming feel in the head and fumes in the breath. Light notes of toasted malts / caramel as the beer warms. Dose of yeast in a drying finish. This is the “tipping point” in the IPA family between drinkable and “BAM.”

120 Minute IPA – It really is the most complex beer I’ve ever had. An explosion of juicy, bright tropical fruits flow into your palate. Its important to take initial sips and let them rest on the tongue for a few seconds to warm up and soak in. The malt takes a back seat as you would expect, with the bitterness of the hops pushing all the right buttons. It is difficult to make a balanced IPA, but this one nails it. I don’t like my IPAs to be too bitter or resinous, but I also don’t like them to be completely floral or citrusy without any bite to back up the flavor. They really achieved greatness – it’s got the perfect bitterness, a subtle but present floral taste that could easily be missed, and the citrus and tropical flavors launching a full-on assault of the palate. The taste of the 120 Minute IPA is simply too complex to be overstated. Sold as a (very expensive) 12oz single. This is the priciest beer I have ever had the luxury of drinking. That said, you will only need one. Trust me. One 12oz bottle of this is the equivalent of 4.5 Bud Lights in alcohol content and about 50 of them in taste.

My first 120, coupled with none other than a Dogfish Head bratwurst! [Opinion Forthcoming]

So, now that I’ve shared a bit of information about each IPA, how do they compare to one another?

Well, I have to say, its really hard to compare these beers. Yes, they are all one family, and yes each of them is, at some level, like the others. I have to stress that each one of these are great beers, and compared to normal swill they stand head and shoulders above pleb-beer masses. That said, I did promise to rank them based on my first experience with each of them.

The three biggest things I considered when ranking these IPAs (since all of them were awesome anyways) were:

Drinkability(D)– How smoothly the beer goes down. In other words, can you drink multiple beers without too much burn, unwanted bitterness, or getting wasted.

Flavor(F) – The complexity of the flavor, for simplicity’s sake this includes everything: aroma, taste, texture, etc.

Uniqueness(U) – How unique the overall experience of each beer was; considering both the factors above as well as harder to quantify sensations such as the way the beer changes as you drink it.

–REMEMBER- I these three factors are between the beers being ranked, NOT against *all* beers.

I’ll assign each beer a score of 1 – 10 in each category, then I’ll average the three scores together for a final score.

I have to say, when mentally mapping this out it looked a lot like that ranking. I think that overall in a single-beer to single-beer death match I have to declare the 75 Minute IPA the winner. There was just something special about that IPA, maybe it was my first beer with maple syrup, I’m not sure. I also think the fact that it blended the 60 and 90 was a strong point. The 120 Minute IPA came in second, and is undoubtedly the most unique beer of the bunch and packs a load of flavor, but its raw strength ended up hindering it just a little bit. The 60 and 90 Minute IPAs were just too close to call. The 60 is more drinkable, but as the “base” of the family its less unique and flavorful, whereas the 90 boasts more flavor and uniqueness, but looses out on drinkability. As such, its pretty simple. “More than 2” = 60, “2 Or 1” = 90. Rounding out the bunch for me was Sixty-One (61). This was a good beer, don’t get me wrong, “last place” here is better than most beers. That said, I felt like the grape musk was underutilized in the mouthfeel and as such it didn’t stand out enough from its direct-brother, the 60, to pull ahead of it. Also, the added sweetness decreased its drinkability below that of 60, so Sixty-One (61), while a good beer, doesn’t fit into the progressive scheme of the family as well as its siblings.

But seriously, all of these are beers you need to drink for yourself. It really wasn’t until I had had all of them, that I began to understand how they related to each other.

Fortunately for me, I still have one more 120 Minute left in the refrigerator. I’ll probably save it for the end of 1L, as those are not a beer that one drinks often, lest you go broke and become a raging alcoholic. In the meantime I’ll probably stick to the more affordable, and easier to find, 60s and 90s. (The Sixty-One (61) and 75 require trips all the way into Boston, sadly).

And there we go, my long-promised Dogfish Head post! I have now completed the family and can drink them recreationally instead of as a project. 🙂

Don’t think that this is the last of Dogfish Head and I though. The next challenge/project for me is none other than their Ancient Ales series, where they literally recreate beers that are thousands of years old based on chemical analyses of residues from various containers. I am, as always, quite excited to try some new (very old) beer!